Bradford v. Parlett

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

No. 113,391

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

ANDREA BRADFORD,
Appellant,

v.

ANITA DRU PARLETT and
CARNAHAN FARMS, LLC,
Appellees.


MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appeal from Labette District Court; ROBERT J. FLEMING, judge. Opinion filed December 4, 2015.
Affirmed.

Timothy J. Grillot, of Parsons, for appellant.

Richard G. Tucker, of Tucker and Markham, Attorneys at Law, LLC, of Parsons, for appellees.

Before BUSER, P.J., LEBEN and BRUNS, JJ.

Per Curiam: Andrea Bradford sued the owner of a neighboring piece of rural land
in Labette County, claiming that a portion of land titled to her neighbor belonged to her
through adverse possession—that is, because she had lived on the land for 15 years and
either believed she owned the land or knew it was in dispute and openly claimed it. The
district court heard the parties' evidence in a trial and ruled against Bradford; she has
appealed to this court.

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On appeal, Bradford cites to the evidence supporting her claim. But there was
contrary evidence too, and the district court concluded that she had failed to prove
essential elements of her claim. When the district court finds that a party has failed to
meet its burden of proof, we cannot overturn that court's decision unless it arbitrarily
disregarded undisputed evidence or showed bias or prejudice. Here, there was evidence
disputing Bradford's claims, the district court did not arbitrarily disregard undisputed
evidence, and we see nothing in the record to support a claim that the district court
showed bias or prejudice. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In 1988, Anita Parlett and her husband at the time, Larry Carnahan, sold a tract of
land to Roy Karstetter and Andrea Hyatt (now Andrea Bradford). Parlett and Carnahan
continued to own the land just to the south of that tract. A fence ran along most of the
boundary line set out in the legal description then jogged south away from the boundary
line onto Parlett and Carnahan's land, leaving a rectangle of their land fenced in with
Karstetter and Bradford's. Surveying done before the sale showed that the boundary line
between the properties continued straight and did not follow the jog in the fence. The
land Bradford now seeks title to is the 1.1-acre piece of land on Bradford's side of the
fence but within the surveyed boundaries of Parlett and Carnahan's land.

In 1993, Karstetter transferred his interest in the land to Bradford. Parlett and
Carnahan divorced in 1995, and Parlett retained their land as part of the divorce
agreement. Thus, the current owners of the adjacent land tracts are Bradford and Parlett.

In 2011, Parlett and Carnahan Farms, LLC, which Carnahan operated on Parlett's
land, filed a petition for injunction alleging that Bradford had caused harmful redirection
of surface water onto Parlett's land. See Parlett v. Bradford, No. 111,564, 2015 WL
717905 (Kan. App. 2015) (unpublished opinion), rev. denied 302 Kan. ___ (September
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14, 2015). The petition included legal descriptions of both parties' land, including the
land disputed here. Those descriptions match the descriptions shown by the 1988 survey
and included in the 1988 contract for sale of real estate from Parlett and Carnahan to
Karstetter and Bradford. In her answer to the 2011 petition, Bradford admitted the legal
descriptions were accurate.

Although the ultimate resolution of the 2011 lawsuit is not relevant to this appeal,
it appears that as part of that lawsuit, on February 5, 2014, Bradford filed what's called a
petition for quiet title, an attempt to "quiet" all challenges to a property whose ownership
is subject to dispute. The district court summarily dismissed the petition after a hearing
on February 25, 2014, at which Bradford's attorney informed the court that "a separate
adverse possession action had already been filed." 2015 WL 717905, at *2.

Bradford had filed that separate action (the case now before us) on February 12,
2014. In it, she sought to settle the property ownership question in her favor. She alleged
that she had occupied the land at issue continuously for more than 15 years; that she
knew of no others with right, title, or interest in the property; and that her possession of
the land was open and clearly obvious to Parlett and Carnahan Farms. Parlett and
Carnahan Farms filed an answer disputing the claim of title, both parties filed trial briefs,
and the parties presented their evidence to the district court in a bench trial on December
17, 2014.

Bradford testified that she had lived on the land for 26 years, during which time
the fence line had not changed. There were no gates in the fence, so Carnahan or Parlett
would have had to climb the fence or come through Bradford's land to access the disputed
property. Bradford said that she had never seen Carnahan or Parlett on the property and
that she had believed since the original purchase that it was hers, partly because Carnahan
and Parlett had never asserted ownership or tried to eject her. Bradford said that she used
the property for pasturing horses and cattle, mowed and hayed the land, and maintained
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the fence. Bradford testified that the 2011 lawsuit was the first time she realized she
might not hold title to the property.

Over Bradford's objection, the district court admitted into evidence the petition
and answer from the 2011 lawsuit. Bradford acknowledged that she had admitted the
property descriptions but said that she had assumed (wrongly, it turned out) that the
descriptions included all the land inside the fence.

For the defendants, Carnahan testified that before he sold the land to Karstetter
and Bradford, he told Karstetter that the property's boundary would "probably go straight
across instead of jogging around the fence." Carnahan said he later gave a copy of the
survey to Karstetter and confirmed that the boundary line would be straight. Carnahan
conceded that he had not talked with Bradford but claimed that there were orange survey
flags marking the tract boundaries. Carnahan said he never intended to convey the
disputed property to Karstetter and Bradford but that he had given Karstetter permission
to use it.

Carnahan said that he had been on the disputed land "several times through the
years" to dove hunt, evaluate the fence's condition, and burn hay. He also said that if
Bradford had ever asserted ownership, he would have ejected her. Parlett similarly
testified that Bradford had never asserted ownership of the property and that she had
allowed Bradford to use it because she was trying to be a good neighbor. Parlett said that
she had burned on the property and that the land was a quail nesting area that she and her
husband used for hunting.

The district court issued a written decision denying Bradford's petition. The court
concluded that she had failed to establish (1) that she had had exclusive and continuous
possession for at least 15 years and (2) that she had occupied the property under a belief
that she owned it. Bradford then appealed to this court.
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ANALYSIS

To establish title by adverse possession, a party must have: "(1) possessed the
property for a period of 15 year in a manner (2) that is (a) open, (b) exclusive, and (c)
continuous; and (3) that is either (a) under a claim knowingly adverse or (b) under a
belief of ownership." Ruhland v. Elliott, 302 Kan. ___, Syl. ¶ 5, 353 P.3d 1124 (2015)
(citing K.S.A. 60-503); see Wright v. Sourk, 45 Kan. App. 2d 860, Syl. ¶ 1, 258 P.3d 981
(2011). In addition, the party claiming adverse possession must demonstrate these
elements by clear and convincing evidence, meaning that the evidence shows the claimed
facts to be highly probable, not merely more likely true than not. Ruhland, 353 P.3d at
1129.

Bradford contends on appeal that she "has been in exclusive and continuous
possession of this tract" for 26 years, but she doesn't explicitly discuss in her appellate
brief how she showed that she did so either knowing Parlett also claimed the land or
genuinely believing she (Bradford) owned it. We could decide the appeal based on this
failure in the briefing; Bradford cannot succeed without meeting all elements of the
adverse-possession claim. We choose, however, to review the merits of Bradford's
adverse-possession claim. See Sauls v. McKune, 45 Kan. App. 2d 915, 918-19, 260 P.3d
95 (2011) (choosing to address an issue on appeal rather than dismissing it even though
"failing to address an alternative basis for a district court's ruling is a sufficient reason to
deny the appeal"). So we look to see whether the district court erred in concluding that
Bradford had not demonstrated (1) that she had possessed the property for 15 years in a
manner (2) that was open, exclusive, and continuous, and (3) that this was either under a
claim knowingly adverse to the other party's title to the land or under a belief that she
owned the land.

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"Whether a party has acquired title by adverse possession is a question of fact to
be determined by the trier of fact—in this case, the district court. [Citation omitted.]"
Ruhland, 353 P.3d at 1128. Its finding that Bradford failed to establish that she met the
criteria for adverse possession was a negative factual finding, which an appellate court
can reverse only if the district court made its decision by arbitrarily disregarding
undisputed evidence or relying on an extrinsic consideration like bias, passion, or
prejudice. See MFA Enterprises, Inc. v. Delange, 50 Kan. App. 2d 1049, 1056, 336 P.3d
891 (2014).

The district court here didn't arbitrarily disregard undisputed evidence. Substantial
evidence supported the court's holding that Bradford failed to show that she had
maintained exclusive and continuous possession of the property. Parlett and Carnahan
testified that they entered and used the property from time to time for hunting, to tend
their pastures, and to evaluate the condition of the fence. Although Bradford testified to
the opposite, as an appellate court, we do not reweigh evidence or determine the
credibility of witnesses. See Peterson v. Ferrell, 302 Kan. 99, 106, 349 P.3d 1269 (2015).
And there is nothing in the record to indicate that the district court was swayed by bias,
passion, or prejudice.

Similarly, the evidence supported the district court's conclusion that Bradford
didn't show she had believed that she owned the property for 15 years: In 2011, in the
pleadings in another lawsuit that were admitted into evidence in this case, Bradford
admitted that the legal description of her property, which excluded the area she now
claims, was accurate. The evidence that she claimed the property in a manner adverse to
Parlett was also disputed; both Parlett and Carnahan testified that Bradford never told
them she was claiming ownership of this land. See Ruhland, 353 P.3d at 1129-30 (noting
that to satisfy "knowingly adverse" element of claim, party must be claiming exclusive
right to property).

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There was evidence from Bradford that supported at least some of the elements of
an adverse-possession claim. But the district court didn't find that evidence clear and
convincing, and we are in no position to second-guess that decision.

We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.